The Boar’s Head brand of deli meat has been in the news lately because of a listeria outbreak that has killed 10 people across the US and sickened dozens more. But the controversy also has called attention to an epic family feud within the billon-dollar meat empire that stretches back decades. Sarah Nassauer of the Wall Street Journal explores the history, which begins simply enough in 1905 when Frank Brunckhorst started a meat-delivery service in Brooklyn. When he died, son Frank Jr. and his daughter’s husband, Bruno Bischoff, took over. Thus you have the two clans—the Brunckhorsts and the Bischoffs—running things today. The problem is, they’ve been fighting through lawsuits and countersuits since 2005, though the acrimony goes back further.
